


Writing Is Fundamental

by Septembers_coda



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Angst, Brother Feels, Death, Gen, Poetry, Suicidal Thoughts, Trials
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-14
Updated: 2016-09-14
Packaged: 2018-08-15 01:37:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,360
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8037154
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Septembers_coda/pseuds/Septembers_coda
Summary: Sam breaks out an old method for dealing with this hellish life he’s chosen. He’s pretty sure Dean never knew.





	Writing Is Fundamental

Sometimes, Sam remembers things that Dean never knew. Secrets he kept from his brother. Not secrets like demon’s blood, or a voicemail that he doesn’t know is a secret, or even like what he really remembers from hell. Secrets there was once every reason and no reason to keep, and he can already hear Dean’s laughter and the phrases he loves to spray Sam with, the _could you be any more gay?_ that Sam would scold him for, if there were ever time to say, not cool, don’t use it as a slur, this isn’t the seventies and we’re not ten, Dean. But Dean is Dean and in some ways it will always be the seventies to him. Ways like the cassette tape collection. Dad’s seventies, really.

Anyway, he doesn’t know why his thoughts are unspooling like this, why connecting one to the other is so hard, but he remembers what he used to do about it, which is what started this particular spool. Yeah. Poetry. He used to write it. 

As a teen, later at Stanford, for a very little while after Jessica died and then one day, when words about a white nightgown and flames on the ceiling found their way, briefly, to the end of his pen, never again. There were secret notebooks that Dean could have found, but if he did, he never said anything. There was even a pen name, and for a little while at Stanford, there was Harper’s, Alaska Quarterly… even The New Yorker, once. This was not a Sam Winchester Dean knew—well, it was no one named Sam Winchester that anyone knew.

Except himself, and here again was that self. Sam did not know why, except for the blood in the Kleenex he’d just coughed into. When he was younger, he’d used those secret green Mead Composition books, those envelopes addressed to literary magazines, to hold together the fluttering, tattered edges of his thoughts, to try to make sense of his nonsensical life. It worked, sort of. Logic and goals and a relentless pursuit of normal had worked better for 90 percent of himself. But for that other ten, here it was again.

That fraction of himself that listened to colors and imaginary friends, could rhyme orange and was more about metaphors than about monsters—the literal kind—had not made an appearance in years of salt and the road. Even meeting angels hadn’t reawakened it, but then again, they hadn’t exactly turned out to be the towers of flame and awe he’d imagined. They were less, and so much more, and he did not want to think about angels right now. He wanted to think about death. His own.

For that, he supposed, was the reason for the notebooks and his favorite Pilot Precise pens. If he had something to say, his last chance to say it had arrived. The Bunker was a good place for poetry. He was glad they found it before he died, though he wasn’t sure how necessary it would be after the gates of hell were closed. At least Dean would have good water pressure.

He wrote, at once remembering and forgetting his process, ignoring the occasional froth of blood that touched the page, a bit of the literal in his metaphor. Death. Sam felt it being set free inside him, a splendid bird whose clipped wing feathers had miraculously grown back, the span of those wings great enough to block the sun and brighter than it. His joy might be a little bit manic under the weight of his exhausted, relentless despair. _Hello, old friend,_ he’d said when it first reappeared. Or spoke again, because of course it had never really gone anywhere. He’d stowed it under the bed with his .45 when he was nine, danced with it instead of a date at homecoming, tucked it behind Jessica’s ear with her hair. 

He used to think everyone wondered why they’d been born. If they did, it wasn’t the same species as his wondering, and now he knew. Once he closed those gates and slid out of this never-right existence, he’d have his answer. Giddy with that, with knowledge and purpose and finally, finally fully expressed despair, he wrote and wrote and wrote. He filled green notebooks, Dean probably thought with research, things about the trials or the angel tablets or anything, really, but poetry. He doesn’t hide the notebooks, just leaves them in a drawer in his bedside table. If Dean ever wants to know—to know so much—he can.

It’s odd, how close it is to poetry between him and Crowley as he works the demon cure. Of course he’s always despised Crowley, but he bets the king of Hell understands poetry. Dante and a thousand poets since. The Satanic School and all that.

Then, somehow. Sam doesn’t die. There’s no sacrifice—he’s always known it would never be enough—and no end. And there’s so much wrong, including something so very, that he knows he doesn’t know yet. The angels fall, and if that isn’t a sight made for verse, Sam’s never seen one. Behind the curtain of his eyelids that is so often down now, he sees that sky, that flame, his death not coming. Not there at the appointed time; instead, Dean’s solid back under his too-thin arms, and _let it go, brother,_ and Sam did. It flew from his arms and blocked the sun and fell in flame.

The notebooks are a foot away, and more to be filled, but now that death is both gone and so close inside him, he doesn’t think he will. If there’s more to say, doubtless he’ll say it with knives and guns and drawn runes, not sharp words or gentle. Not rhyme, but then, Sam has never really liked rhyme.

He doesn’t move much. He sleeps a lot, and feels his ribs with wondering hands, and wakes up enough sometimes to notice Dean’s worried eyes.

This time when he wakes to them, they look more stoic and curious than worried, and their green is tucked behind Mead-green. His boots on Sam’s bed, back curved into a fifties-style chair. He holds up the notebook; it doesn’t appear that he’s cracked it yet.

“What’s this?” he asks Sam, and his voice is so careful it’s not much like Dean. So neutral, though Dean has always taken a side.

“Poetry,” Sam says, and just like that, no reason not to tell though he always didn’t, it becomes not one of those things. Not kept. Sam is done with secrets now. He left them all in the hands of his not-death. “Mine. Bet it’ll be just your thing, too. Wanna read some? There’s five more notebooks like it when you’re done with that one.” His tongue has not forgotten this Winchester edge any more than his pen had; Dean’s not the only sarcastic bastard in the room.

Sam could see Dean’s lips framing the words “I’ll pass, thanks,” the knife edge of derision, with _gay_ in there somewhere, surely. He sees the harsh untruths and the not-saids still between them, because Dean, even just sitting there not speaking, is lying to him right now. He doesn’t know what the lie is yet, or what one he himself will tell if his truth wears out again, but this language he speaks. This tongue he knows.

Dean, though, doesn’t say _gay_ , and Sam’s vision is a little muzzy yet, but it looks like Dean fingers the speckled hard cover. “It says number three,” he says, pulling open Sam’s bedside drawer. “Should I start with number one?”

When Sam is silent for a long time, looking at him, Dean turns from rummaging, with number one in his hand. “What? I read.”

Sam’s belly settles into a place more like where it should be. His hands drop from his ribs and he thinks soon, they won’t remember the washboard edge anymore. His ears turn down low, not hearing the turn of the first page. His knee moves just a bit to brush Dean’s boot.

_That’s right,_ he can’t quite say through the thick curtain sliding down. _You do._


End file.
